Joshua Taillon

NIST/NRC Postdoctoral Researcher

Welcome!

Dr. Joshua Taillon is a National Research Council postdoctoral research associate at
the National Institute of Standards and Technology (Materials Measurement Science Division).
His research interests lie at the intersection of materials characterization and
machine learning, utilizing state-of-the art signal processing techniques to facilitate
greater understanding of material systems.
His current work focuses on the application of compressed sensing strategies to enhance
chemical spectroscopic analysis within electron microscopes, and is funded by an
NRC grant.

Joshua received a B.S. from Cornell University, and as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow,
he received his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland under the supervision of
Professor Lourdes Salamanca-Riba.
While at Maryland, he specialized in analytical transmission electron microscopy and
focused ion beam nanotomography, with applications in wide bandgap microelectronics and
solid oxide fuel cells.
In December 2016, he was presented
with a Graduate Student Award from the Materials Research Society for his
analytical TEM investigations of 4H-SiC MOSFET interfaces.

Interests

Machine Learning for Materials Science

Computational Microscopy

Open Software Development

Focused Ion Beam Method Development

Materials Characterization Research

Education

Ph.D. - Materials Science and Engineering, 2016

University of Maryland, College Park

M.S. - Materials Science and Engineering, 2014

University of Maryland, College Park

B.S. - Materials Science and Engineering, 2011

Cornell University

Selected Publications

In this work, we present a number of techniques to improve the quality of the acquired nanotomography data, together with easy-to-implement methods to obtain “advanced” microstructural quantifications. The techniques are applied to a solid oxide fuel cell cathode of interest to the electrochemistry community, but the methodologies are easily adaptable to a wide range of material systems.

In this work, we demonstrate a simple spin-coating system that can be used to easily coat planar samples with a conductive polymer film. Such a system provides protection to samples during FIB imaging and milling at a fraction of the cost of traditional coating instruments.

In this work, we characterize the transition layer at the 4H-SiC/SiO2 interface as a function of nitric oxide (NO) post-annealing time using HRTEM and EELS. We confirm an inverse relationship between NO-anneal time and transition layer width, which correlates with improved channel mobility.